A Merman's Guide to Human Beings
by Cactus Bob
Summary: An edutainment production by Atem of the Underwater City! Atem tells the tale of his journey to the human world, explaining all of the tricky customs and complicated technology of the surface.
1. Author's Note

When I was a young child, I felt curiosity about the unknown, like every other young child. But in my case, my curiosity was focused on the mysterious human world above the water. I longed for answers for my questions. "How do they swim without fins?" "What kinds of food do they eat?" Even "How do they go to the bathroom?"

But, alas, there was no one to help me. As I grew older, my curiosity grew quieter, but it never disappeared. So when I turned seventeen, I decided that I would go to the human world, find out for myself the answers to my questions, and then pass that information on to future generations.

I had no idea how out of my depth I would be, if you'll excuse the pun. I could barely do anything when I reached land—I couldn't read, couldn't dress myself, couldn't even stand up. I was fortunate enough to encounter an extremely kind human boy named Yugi Mutou. With his help, I was able to learn a great deal about the human world. And now, I believe that I can blend seamlessly into American human culture.

This book will center around my experiences with Yugi and with his friends. I hope that you will find out everything that you wish to know about human beings, and I hope even more that you will realize that humans and merpeople are more alike than they seem.


	2. Chapter 1

Yu-Gi-Oh (c) Kazuki Takahashi

I'm also very proud of this fic. It could be considered a fluff piece, in the way that it's very lighthearted and doesn't have a villian. Enjoy!

* * *

Now as you well know, all merpeople have the ability to assume a human shape, but few of us choose to do so. The very first time I transformed, I was sitting on the sand near the pier, underwater, of course. When my legs formed and my fins and gills disappeared, I felt a horrible choking sensation, as if some invisible force was pressing down on my insides. For a brief moment, I panicked, but I soon remembered that humans can't breathe underwater, like merpeople can't breathe in the air. 

I kicked off the ground with my new-found feet. My head burst out of the water, and I took a long, deep breath of salty sea air. The water seemed unusually cold to me, and the sun seemed comfortingly bright and warm. I wasn't quite sure how to use my legs properly yet, so I clawed my way to shore with my arms.

As I sat on the sand with the waves lapping at my feet, I was able to get a good sense of my body. I looked at my legs and my feet and my un-webbed hands, and I realized how ugly I had become. I suppose that it's unfair for me to judge the beauty of a human, but I couldn't see anything attractive about my new form. My skin, which had been a sort of milky-white beneath the water, seemed vampire-like in the sun. The toes attached to my feet reminded me of overgrown barnacles. My teeth were too straight and too flat. I felt so repulsive that I felt a strong urge to cover myself up with anything.

Like an answer from heaven, I saw a pile of human clothing a little ways off. I managed to scramble over on my hands and knees, and I held up the pieces of fabric as I sat on the hot sand. The clothes seemed like a poor two-dimensional rendition of a human body. I wondered if I should try to put them on, somehow.

Suddenly, I heard a voice yelling at me from the water. A boy came running up. This boy's name, as I later found out, was Yugi Mutou. As I've told you, Yugi Mutou is an astonishingly kind person, so it's a shame that I first met him when he was angry at me.

"Hey! Give those back!" Yugi bellowed. But as he ran up next to me, his already large eyes widened to the size of sand dollars. His face turned bright red, and he quickly turned his back on me. "Uh… never mind. You seem to need those more than I do."

I looked Yugi up and down. He was almost as naked as I was, except for a piece of clothing that covered part of his lower body. I assumed that it was the strange appendage between my legs that was making him so uncomfortable, because it was the only part of his body that couldn't be seen. With some difficulty, I managed to maneuver the pants onto my legs. I slid the top of the pants over my hips, and I closed the front with something called a zipper. "Is this better?" I asked.

Yugi turned around and nodded. He quickly scooped up the other pieces of clothing, pulled something out of his jacket, and looked inside it. The object he was examining is called a wallet; it carries money and identification. Apparently, Yugi's first instinct was to think that I was stealing from him. But when he saw that I had taken nothing from him except his pants, he looked relieved.

I watched him closely as he put on his shirt. He didn't put on the jacket; he just held it. "You're a merman, aren't you?" Yugi asked.

I chuckled softly. "I must be doing a terrible impersonation of humans for you to recognize my true nature so quickly," I replied. "I'm sorry for taking your clothes."

"It's alright; I have more," Yugi said lightly. "So are you here for business or for pleasure?"

"A little of both, actually," I answered. "I'm writing a book about humans so that merpeople can learn about the human world without having to go through this."

I must admit, my first few minutes of humanity had been extremely uncomfortable. The sun which had been so pleasantly warm at first had turned scorching hot. I felt wet and dry at the same time, and water dripped from my forehead. My skin, so unaccustomed to sunlight, had already turned from vampire-pale to light magenta. Besides that, my legs, feet, and rear end had been covered in sand when I put my pants on.

"It looks like you could use some help," Yugi said. He looked a little amused as he gazed down at me. I was helplessly sitting on the sand, unable to stand up because of my unfamiliar legs.

"I would be most grateful for any assistance you could give me," I said. I was trying to be as respectful as I could. For all I knew, this boy was some manner of royalty, and I had just tried to steal away with his clothing.

Yugi bent down and held out his hand. "I'm Yugi," he said. I took his hand, and he pulled me to my feet. I nearly toppled back down immediately. My legs felt unsteady and week. I couldn't imagine for a moment that I would actually learn to support myself on them. But Yugi held my shoulders firmly as I waved back and forth like kelp, and I managed not to fall down.

I found my balance after a minute or so. Yugi slowly let go of me, and I found myself standing on my own two feet for the first time in my life. I was absolutely thrilled. I smiled broadly and laughed, and Yugi smiled with me. "Okay, now try standing on one foot," Yugi said. The smile slid off my face. One foot? It was hard enough standing on two!

Just to show me it was possible, Yugi demonstrated. It looked so easy for him, just like walking, running, and jumping was easy for him. He took for granted how hard a skill it was to learn, using one's legs.

I tried very hard to balance on that one small foot, but I quickly wobbled, and Yugi grabbed my hands to keep me from falling. Again, Yugi stood while I used him to find my balance, and I was able to let go off his hands after about a minute. After we repeated this with the other leg, Yugi said, "You've done really well so far, but you're going to have to learn how to walk."

To me, walking seemed like an impossible task. But I remembered that I had just learned how to stand and balance on one foot, and walking didn't seem so impossible anymore. And that's when I realized how extraordinary a teacher Yugi was. He had managed to simultaneously build my skills and my confidence in myself, never asking me to do anything that I couldn't do.

I took his hand and mimicked his movements. I lifted one foot up, balanced, and then put the foot back down in front of me. Then I pushed my weight forward and repeated this with the other foot. I was moving very slowly, and Yugi was being very patient. My steps were shaky, but after a few paces walking grew easier for me. I eventually let go of Yugi's hand and walked on my own.

Yugi gave me a round of applause. I'm sure that I glowed with my success, or perhaps I just glowed with my quickly growing sunburn. A sunburn is a very unpleasant thing, especially for skin like ours. It doesn't hurt very much at first, but it begins to ache and throb later on, and then there's the strange feeling of peeling the top layers of your skin off.

"Would you like to come back to my house and have dinner?" Yugi asked. "No offense, but it doesn't really look like you have money or anything."

I winced. There is a place in the Underwater City where one can exchange merpeople's money for human money, but I had been careless enough to forget about that. I could have easily returned to the water to take care of this, but I had just learned how to walk, and I didn't want to undo what I had just worked so hard for.

"Thank you. That would be very nice," I said. "I hope that there's some way for me to repay you…"

"Oh, don't worry about that," Yugi replied casually. "Why don't you just mention me in your book, okay?" I vowed to myself that I would.

Yugi and I set out at a seahorse's pace toward Yugi's home. I was quickly gasping for breath—not only was it incredibly hot, but I had never worked my leg muscles in that way before. As we walked, passing humans gazed at me strangely. I realize now that I must have been quite a spectacle to them. I was lobster-red, covered in sand, and wearing no shirt.

When we finally reached Yugi's home, I leaned against a nearby sign. I felt a little embarrassed, being so tired and hot when Yugi looked just fine. Yugi opened up the door and walked inside, and I followed after him. "Hi, Grandpa," Yugi said to the old man in the room. Grandpa's eyes fixed on me, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Yugi, what have you been doing down at the beach?" Grandpa asked.

"This is just a new friend of mine," Yugi said. "He's a merman, and he wants to find out more about humans. Is it alright if he stays for dinner?"

Grandpa sighed. At the time, I thought that he didn't trust me, but the truth was that he had been feeding Yugi's other friends for a good three years now. When he looked at me, all he saw was another stomach, merman or not. "Alright," Grandpa said finally.

"Thanks, Grandpa!" Yugi exclaimed. As Yugi helped me climb the stairs, he whispered to me, "I'll ask him if you can spend the night later."

I really was stunned by Yugi's generosity. Don't be fooled—most humans wouldn't offer you free room and board after a chance encounter on the beach. For the third time, I must mention that Yugi was unusually kind.

"If you want, you can use the shower to get all that sand off," Yugi said. "And I'll lend you some of my clothes until you get your own."

"Shower?" I repeated. I had heard the term in regards to a type of rain, but how was one supposed to "use" a shower? Yugi just smiled and led me into a special room of the house. This room, I learned, was a human version of a bathroom. It had a special seat for… well, I'm sure you know. But it also had a device called a shower. A shower is used to clean the body. Water comes out of the wall, and you stand under it and let it wash away the grime. There's also something called soap, which takes away bad smells.

Now, it would be impossible for me to explain the sense of smell properly. The best way I can describe it is this—when you breathe normal water, you don't notice anything. But when you breathe water that has been tainted with blood or squid's ink or oil, the water has a different sort of taste. Smell is very similar to this, except the nose is far more sensitive than gills.

Yugi turned two knobs, and water came out of the wall. He waited a while, testing the stream of liquid with his hand every few seconds. Steam, which is a very hot kind of water, began to fill the room. Yugi told me to wait here, and then he came back with a full set of clothing and a towel. The pants and shirt I understood. But there was also something called underwear, which is worn on the lower body underneath the pants.

"Alright, now I'm going to leave, and then you'll take off your pants and step into the shower," Yugi explained. "Let the water wash off all the sand, and use the soap to get the sea-smell off your skin." At this, Yugi excused himself, shutting the door behind him.

I was happy to get the pants off. I had spent my entire life wearing no clothes at all, and clothing can be stifling when first worn. I touched the stream of water with my hand uncertainly. The water was very warm, but pleasantly so, like the hot jets of the deep ocean. I stepped into the shower and watched as the sand slid off me like a second skin.

A shower is can be very refreshing. The wet-dry feeling of my skin, known as dampness, disappeared. My overheated body became comfortably warm. I wasn't quite sure what Yugi meant by sea-smell. I sniffed my skin and noticed nothing unusual. But Yugi knew much more about human standards than I did, so I rubbed the soap all over my body and washed it off with the water.

When I thought I was done, I stepped out of the water and then turned the knobs back to their original positions. I was dripping wet, and I suspected that I wasn't supposed to change into my new clothing in this state. I picked up the towel that Yugi had brought in, and I noticed that it absorbed all of the water on my wrinkled hands. So I used it to dry the rest of my body, and then I changed into my clothes with inexperienced difficulty.

Just before I left the bathroom, I turned around and noticed that I had left Yugi's bathroom in extreme disarray. There was sand everywhere, and the room was steamy and wet. I felt terrible leaving the room like this, but I couldn't think of a way to clean it up.

Yugi was sitting on his bed with a towel in his lap. He looked up when he heard me. "I'm sorry, Yugi. I think I made a mess of your bathroom," I said.

"Don't worry about it. I do too," Yugi said dismissively. "That reminds me; I don't even know your name."

"I'm Atem," I said. Yugi smiled and walked past me into the hall. He stepped discreetly into the bathroom and turned the water back on, leaving me to entertain myself in Yugi's bedroom.

I stumbled over to his bed and sat down. But almost as soon as I let my weight down onto the bed, I felt an invisible force pushing me back up again. I stared dumbly at the bed. At first, I wondered if it was some sort of creature that would allow only Yugi to recline on it. But I soon realized how foolish this was. It was a bed—it wasn't alive. I sat back down on it again, but much more slowly. I was able to sit comfortably this time. The invisible force, I learned, is called a bounce, and it can happen when you sit down too heavily on springy objects.

As I looked around at Yugi's room, I realized how many things about the human world I didn't yet understand. At the time, learning all about this place seemed impossible. But it was not impossible. Although human beings have invented a number of devices to make living easier, they still live. They eat, they sleep, they love and hate each other, just like we do. I sat there, ignorant and young, thinking that Yugi and I were so different. Yet Yugi has grown to be my closest and most trusted friend. Our worlds are different, yes, but we are the same.


	3. Chapter 2

I waited for a very long time for Yugi to come out of the shower, and I grew quite bored. I was occasionally tempted to snoop about Yugi's possessions, but luckily, I resisted the urge.

When Yugi finally emerged, I realized what had taken him such a long time. He had cleaned up all of the sand from the bathroom. I had made most of the mess, remember, so I was ashamed that I had been impatient. "Sorry that took so long," Yugi apologized. "Are you ready to eat now?"

I wasn't very hungry, but there was a strange, itchy sensation in the back of my throat that I hadn't felt before. I didn't know whether this foreign feeling was related to food or not, so I just nodded and followed my new mentor to the kitchen.

Merpeople don't prepare their food very much. I'm sure that the most elaborate meal you've had was ether sashimi or seaweed rolls. But humans go through enormous amounts of trouble to make their food taste certain ways. Yugi dished up a plate and handed it to me. I sat down, because standing was making me tired, and placed my food in front of me.

I had no idea what I was about to eat. Yugi set his plate down too, along with two cups full of some bubbling brown liquid and two strange metal utensils with prongs on the end. "It's not very fancy, but Grandpa and I aren't very experienced cooks," Yugi said sheepishly. Grandpa entered the room shortly, got his own plate, and then sat down with us.

I knew that I should have eaten something at that moment for respect's sake, but I was feeling a little nervous about putting these strange things inside my body. I watched as Yugi and Grandpa picked up their utensils and skewered their food. Both of them were watching me carefully. Slowly, uncertainly, I picked up my own utensil and stabbed one of the golden, flaky objects on my plate. They are called tatter-tots, and they are made from a vegetable called a potato. I gazed at the strange object for a while, and then I shoved the thing into my mouth and chewed quickly to get the experience over with.

This tatter-tot was so full of flavor, it made my mouth burn. It was much saltier than anything I had tasted before, and it had a strange sort of oil that covered my tongue. The outside of it crunched when I bit into it, but the inside was soft. And the most unusual thing was that the food was _warm_.

I've told you that water becomes steam when it is heated. But when other things are heated, they don't become steam; they burn. And the burning emits something called a flame, which is very bright and painful to the touch. One of the ways that humans prepare their food is by putting it in or near a flame, so that it becomes hot.

I'm not quite sure what the expression on my face was, but Yugi seemed pleased when he saw it. "Yugi, get a knife for your guest. He's not Joey," Grandpa chided. Yugi excused himself momentarily from the table and returned with two silver knives. He handed one to me, although I wasn't quite sure what we would be using it for. Were we supposed to battle for the food with these knives, or something along those lines?

Humans have made dining an extremely complicated experience. We merpeople eat with our hands, and humans do too, sometimes, but they have also invented at least four other utensils to eat with. The fork, the utensil with the prongs, can be used either to stab food or to scoop it up. The knife, which Yugi had just handed to me, is used to cut large pieces of food into smaller, bite-sized pieces. There are also spoons and chopsticks, but I won't explain these now.

Yugi stabbed a piece of chicken (a certain kind of animal) with his fork to brace it while he took it apart with his knife. I could not fathom why they wouldn't just pick up the chicken and bite it like a normal person, but I made efforts to be respectful, and I too cut apart my food with a knife.

The more tatter-tots and chicken that I ate, however, the worse the itching in my throat became. I was utterly confused. But about halfway through the meal, I saw Grandpa pick up his cup full of brown liquid and swallow a mouthful of it. I was shocked. I assumed that the liquid had been something like boiling oil—was it really something to ingest?

Bravely, I picked up my cup and imitated Grandpa. The "boiling oil," actually known as soda, is one of the many things that humans need to drink to survive. You see, merpeople live in water, so we don't need to drink anything. But humans live on land, and they need to put water into their bodies by drinking liquids like soda. The bubbles in the drink felt strange on my tongue, but the soda tasted very good, and it helped the itching in my throat. I drained half of the glass in a second, which amused Yugi very much.

"Thirsty, huh?" Yugi asked. I nodded, and I made sure to remember the word that Yugi had used.

When we finished eating, Yugi took the plates and the cups from the table and washed them off with water and soap, like a little shower just for the dishes. Grandpa was about to leave, but Yugi stopped him. "Um, Grandpa," Yugi began, "Atem doesn't really have a place to stay. Don't you think that we should help him out?"

I watched this interaction carefully. I could tell that Grandpa wasn't about to lend an entire room of his house to a stranger without a fight. But I could also tell that Yugi wanted me to stay here very much.

"I'm sure that Atem has a home under the water with his own family," Grandpa defended. "Besides, I'm sure he'd rather be with his own people where he's comfortable than stay here."

"But I'm sure that he wants to immerse himself in our culture so that he'd be able to write his book better," Yugi replied masterfully. "And it's the least that we can do for someone in need, right, Grandpa?" This was like a duel of words. Yugi had blocked Grandpa's defense, and now he was going in for the kill.

Grandpa seemed unsure, and Yugi pushed harder. "Atem's not going to get into any trouble, and I'll make sure that he doesn't eat as much as Joey," Yugi continued. "Maybe he'll even help you in the shop." Yugi glanced at me, and I nodded fervently. Grandpa sighed. He had lost the battle, and he knew it.

"Alright, he can stay," Grandpa said. I could practically see the celebration in Yugi's mind, and I shared his joy. Living with human beings would allow me to learn much more about human culture than if I was only an observer from the sidelines.

Yugi grabbed my hand and led me to his room. "You can have my bed," he said. He hastily ripped the fabric off of his bed and tossed it in a heap on the floor. Then he pulled identical strips of fabric out of a nearby drawer and began putting them on his bed.

What Yugi was doing is a ritual of sorts. The fabric on the bed is called sheets, and they are changed regularly to promote hygiene. Yugi was changing his sheets ahead of schedule out of respect for me. "And you can borrow my pajamas until you buy new ones," Yugi said.

"Pajamas?" I asked.

"Well, you wear pajamas when you go to sleep," Yugi explained. "And when you get up, you change back into day clothes." I would not recommend wearing pajamas during the day time unless in certain special circumstances. I once wore my pajamas into a restaurant because I was in a hurry, and I was promptly asked to leave. Even within the category of day clothes, there are some things that are not appropriate for formal situations.

So far, I'm sure, the human world seems extremely complicated to you. And this is true—humans have an enormous number of customs and traditions that one must adhere to carefully. If you are planning to visit the human world soon, you should become familiar with these customs, but don't worry. Most humans will forgive you if you make a small mistake, because they understand that you are not completely familiar with their ways.

Yugi handed me a pair of navy blue pajamas, and I had learned enough to know that I should change in private. "I'll put these on in the bathroom," I said. Yugi seemed pleasantly surprised that I knew this much already.

When I returned to Yugi's bathroom to change, I noticed something that I hadn't noticed last time. On the wall, there seemed to be a perfect picture of me. When I moved, the picture moved with me. When I frowned, the picture frowned. I reached out and touched this magic picture, and it reached out and touched me back.

This magic picture is called a mirror. It has a reflective surface. If you've ever poked your head out of the water and looked at yourself in the sea, you know what I mean.

In this mirror, I saw myself for the very first time. I had some idea of what I looked like chest down, of course, but I had never seen my face. It was such a strange feeling, watching myself watch myself, that I had to look away for a moment just to regain my bearings.

I changed into my pajamas as the sun began to set. The sun, which had before been yellow, turned gold and orange and red and even purple and green. I watched it from the window as it fell behind the buildings, faded to blue, and disappeared. Little white stars started to dot the night sky. I must have been standing there watching the sunset for longer than I realized, because Yugi came and knocked on the door.

"Atem?" he asked. "Are you okay in there?"

I opened the door with a sheepish look on my face. "I'm sorry, Yugi, I was just watching the sun," I said. Yugi seemed surprised.

"I guess that we take that for granted," Yugi said. "I guess that we take a lot of things for granted." Yugi walked into the living room, where he was preparing another bed on the couch, and I followed him. "Just the idea of you writing that book makes me think about all of the things that humans don't even notice anymore," Yugi continued. "I'd love to read it once it's finished."

And I realized that Yugi must have been as curious about my world as I was about his. It was a shame that he would never be able to see my home like I saw his. It was a shame that he would never be able to write a book like this one. I thought that it was unfair that we merpeople could experience humanity, but humans could never experience what it's like to be one of us. And I foolishly wished that I could show him everything that I took for granted, so that he could be as in awe of my world as I was of his.


	4. Chapter 3

I lay there on Yugi's bed, feeling as though I were trying to go to a sleep on a rock. By human standards, Yugi's bed was very comfortable, but without the water to lift up my body, the bed seemed hard and lumpy.

Not only that, but I was also still trying to get used to the feeling of clothes. They never seemed to fit correctly, and that only got worse as I moved around. I was hot, and I had thrown off most of Yugi's carefully prepared sheets so that I wouldn't roast in my sleep. I tossed and turned for hours before I finally dozed off, and I had a fitful night's rest.

When I finally did wake up, I still felt tired. I threw an arm over my eyes to block out the bright morning sun, and my shoulders screamed in protest. I slipped the fabric off my arm to see what could have been the matter, and I saw a red, crusty patch of skin, all cracked and peeling on my shoulder and neck. It reminded me so much of scale rot that I panicked for a moment, thinking that I had actually come down with that hateful disease. But I soon remembered that I no longer had scales, and I chided myself for being so stupid.

Flames burn, I've told you, but the sun burns as well. And that's exactly what the sun had down to my sensitive, pale skin, thus meriting the name "sunburn." Every time I moved, the soft fabric of Yugi's navy blue pajamas rubbed up against my wound, nearly making me cry out from this new pain. But I resolved to take every discomfort of the human world in stride.

I heard soft, rhythmic thumps on the hallway floor. They stopped outside my door. I wondered what the sound could be, so I got out of the bed and opened the door. Yugi was standing there, and he looked dismayed when he saw me. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't wake you up, did I?" Yugi said. "I was just checking to see if you were awake."

"Don't worry. I was," I answered. Most of the night, I added mentally. Yugi looked as tired as I felt. His smile was a little dreamy and far-away, and he had small yellow things in the corners of his eyes.

"Do you want some breakfast?" Yugi asked. As if in response, my stomach growled. Yugi laughed, and we walked to the kitchen.

Here comes another example of the outrageous trouble humans go through to prepare food. First, Yugi caused a piece of metal to heat up. Then he pulled all sorts of things out of cupboards and drawers. It would take another book to explain all of these things to you. Yugi combined a number of ingredients into a thick liquid, and then he poured the liquid in circle shapes onto the hot piece of metal. A few minutes later, he flipped the circles over.

The paste had been bubbly and white, but after it was burned, it was a flat, golden, solid circle. I would have been pleased to just eat this, but then Yugi smeared a white, creamy substance over the circles and poured another liquid on top of them. He set two of the circles on a plate in front of me and handed me a fork.

These circles were quite large, so I wondered how I would be able to skewer them and stick them in my mouth. But Yugi used the side of his fork like a knife and broke off bite-sized pieces. "Would you mind if I ask what you called these?" I asked.

"They're called pancakes," Yugi replied, his mouth full of food. "If you have more, you can stack them all on top of each other, but I don't like to eat that much in the morning. If you want more, there are leftovers."

I took a bite of this "pancake" and found that it was very sweet. The dark liquid on top of the pancake was sticky, which meant that things—my hand, bread crumbs, etc.—clung to it. Some of the liquid, called syrup, was on my lip, but I found that my saliva took it off easily. When I finished my pancakes, I sucked my fingers to take the syrup off of them, and Yugi looked at me amusedly. I knew that I had done something wrong, and I froze with my index finger in my mouth.

Without saying a word, Yugi got up, wetted a towel, and handed it to me. Then he used another wet towel to wipe off his own hands. I learned that many things are not intended to go in my mouth, including my fingers.

"Do you want to go explore town, or would you like to stay here?" Yugi asked. "We could go to the arcade."

I was dumbfounded. I was getting used to being confused, because almost everything here was foreign to me. Yugi seemed to be getting used to me being confused as well, but he wasn't annoyed at me. "The arcade is a place where you can pay money to play games," Yugi explained patiently. "My friends and I like to go there sometimes."

If Yugi and his friends enjoyed going there, then I could find no reason why I shouldn't. "That sounds like an excellent idea," I said, "but I don't want to cause you any more trouble. You've already done too much for me."

Yugi waved his hand as if this were the stupidest thing in the world. "Just let me get ready, and then we can go."

When Yugi said that he was going to get ready, he meant going to go through an extensive eighth-tide-long process to make himself and his home presentable in the daytime hours. First, Yugi went back into his bedroom and addressed the bed. I watched him, which must have been strange for him, but he didn't say anything. I thought that he was going to change his sheets again, but he just straightened out the fabrics so that they weren't in a heap.

Then Yugi ran a comb through his hair to take the knots out. He drifted off to the bathroom and splashed water in his face to get the yellow things out of his eyes. And then he washed out his mouth by buffering his teeth with a special sort of soap called toothpaste.

Yugi tossed me a set of clothes from his closet and retreated to his bedroom to change. As I climbed out of my pajamas and put on my new day clothes, I began to wonder if I, too, should be "getting ready." Should I comb out my hair and clean my mouth? Would Yugi be ashamed to be seen with me if I didn't?

When I emerged from the bathroom, Yugi whisked away my pajamas so that they could be cleaned. Humans like clean things very much, and they despise what is unkempt or dirty.

"Are you ready to go?" Yugi asked.

"I think so," I replied, although I wouldn't have been able to know the true answer to that question if my life depended on it. Yugi smiled and took my hand, and we said goodbye to Grandpa before leaving Yugi's home.

"So have you learned anything interesting yet?" Yugi asked. His walk was casual and loose; my walk was tight and stiff. Although I was feeling much steadier on my feet, I certainly hadn't become an experienced walker.

"Yes," I said, "many things. I don't know how I'm going to write all this down so that my people can understand. I've experienced it first-hand, and I barely understand it myself."

"It does seem like a big job," Yugi commented. "Especially when Domino is so different from where you came from. I can't imagine having to explain your world to human beings."

I chuckled. "Actually, it would be rather simple. We merpeople don't live very complicated lives." I sighed and looked around me. Great machines called cars carried people from place to place. Moving pictures on giant boards loomed over me. Women clicked past me as their strange, raised foot covers hit the street. "You have so many extraordinary things here," I said softly. "I wouldn't have been able to imagine any of this."

Yugi looked at me with a sort of sad appreciation. "It is loud here, and bright," I continued. "And everything seems so hurried and complicated. It's overwhelming and thrilling and exhausting, all at the same time. And I don't know how I can express how this place makes me feel and explain the things I see in the same book."

"Don't worry about that," Yugi said. "Just try to remember." I peered at him. This feeling was so strong—how could I ever forget it? "New things grow old fast. If you stay here for too long, you'll start to take things for granted just like the rest of us."

And I realized that Yugi was right. Already, I had started to quietly accept things that had once seemed incredible. I was standing on my feet and walking down the street. I had a sunburn. I had just slept in a human bed and eaten human food. How can it be so easy to forget that amazing feeling of novelty? Something overwhelming and thrilling and exhausting can become dull in a matter of days. It's a shame that things are the way they are. So I pictured the moment in my mind clearly and wrote it on mental stone. If I was going to write a book, I needed to remember every first experience. I needed to remember how I connected things to my mind. I needed to remember how things made me feel.

There are so many humans on the street at a time they need to be organized. The people in cars drive in a certain area, while those who walk stay to the side of the road. Colored lights direct certain people to go forward, certain people to turn, and certain people to wait, like a choreographed dance. "Green means go," Yugi explained. "Red means stop. Yellow means that the light's about to turn red, so slow down."

When Yugi and I entered the arcade, I was assailed by more noise than I had ever heard in my life. I felt as though my brain was about to dribble out of my ears, but it was comfortingly dark. There were machines all over the room, and the area was crowded with people. I had never seen so many humans in my life, and I began to feel claustrophobic and nervous.

"Come on!" Yugi yelled. His voice barely carried over the din. He grabbed my hand and held it tightly as we weaved through the forest of legs. I felt as though I was swimming through kelp fields. Yugi led me to a specific machine that no one was using. As I look back, I realize why many people avoided this machine. It was considered one of the "dirty things" that humans prefer to stay away from.

Yugi pulled metal coins out of his pocket and put them into the machine through a slot. "You can be Mr. Pacman; I'll be Mrs. Pacman," Yugi said. I nodded dumbly, and he moved me to his left. Suddenly, a picture flashed on the machine. At the time, I couldn't read English, so I had no idea what the picture said.

"Alright," Yugi said. "You use this to move your character around. It's called a joystick." Yugi was referring to a slender metal rod with a ball on the end. Yugi held the joystick by the base, because the ball had gum, which is a sticky food, pasted onto the top of it. "In the game, you want to grab the little balls in the path and avoid the monsters that are chasing us," Yugi explained.

Already, I was confused again. Character? Little balls? Monsters? I had no idea what he was talking about. The picture on the screen changed and became a little maze. I saw the little balls, but I couldn't tell which little creatures were the monsters and which were the character. "You're the yellow guy with the big mouth," Yugi whispered to me. The game started, and the monsters started to move around of their own accord. I gently moved the joystick forward, and my character moved up. I moved the joystick left, and my character moved left. Yugi was looked out for me while I found my bearings, simultaneously luring the monsters away and eating up the little balls.

I took the joystick more firmly and navigated my character around the maze. My little yellow circle-man sped around, gobbling up the little balls. Just as Yugi was about to lose, I ate up the last ball in my corner, and we beat the level.

"Great job!" Yugi exclaimed. He held out his hand, his palm facing me, his fingers outstretched. I copied this gesture, and Yugi slapped his hand against mine. "It's called a high-five," Yugi mentioned as we started the next level.

We continued to play on the decrepit machine until level thirty-five, when both of our characters were destroyed. "Alright! New high score!" Yugi said happily. Yugi marked our victory with a few unknown characters, but when I look back at the picture in my mind, I know that he wrote "Y&A".


	5. Chapter 4

Yugi and I spent a few more hours in the arcade, but we soon began to grow hungry and we set out in search of food. "Are we going back to your home?" I asked. The arcade had been so loud that the street seemed incredibly serene in comparison.

"Nah, we'll just go to the food court," Yugi said. We walked into a very large building, which had a number of smaller buildings inside of it. I could not read the signs above the smaller buildings, but I could tell that almost all of them were stores where clothing, jewelry, and such could be bought.

Yugi ignored the stores and instead led me to a court full of seats and tables. It was as if Yugi's kitchen had been reproduced several times over. Yugi guided me to an empty table and said, "I'll go get our lunch. You stay here, and I'll be back in a second." Yugi smiled at me and then left me alone. I sat down and promised myself that I would not become nervous being alone in such a busy place.

"Yugi!" someone yelled. I looked around. Yugi was across the food court—why would they be yelling to me? Three humans came running up to my table. "Hey… Oh, I'm sorry," one human said. It was a female, and by human standards, I'm sure she was very pretty. "I thought that you were someone else."

I remembered my face in the mirror, and I realized how similar in appearance I was to Yugi. From a distance, anyone could have easily been confused. The humans apologized and were about to leave, but I stopped them. "Are you looking for him?" I asked. They turned around. "He's supposed to come back soon. He's getting food."

"Hey, do you know him?" a male human asked. "You look a lot like him. Are you like his cousin or something?"

"We're not related, and I'm afraid that I don't know Yugi very well yet," I said. The female immediately looked intrigued, and she took the liberty of sitting down at the table with me.

"So you just met Yugi?" she asked. "It's great that he's finding new friends. What's your name?" She spoke very quickly, and I could tell that she was excited. The other two males sat down more slowly and casually, but they, too, looked interested in me.

"I'm Atem," I said, feeling simultaneously threatened and amused. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Hi, guys," Yugi said. He had two trays of food in his hands. "What are you doing here?"

"We thought Atem was you," the female explained. "So, how'd you two meet?" Yugi sat down with out meals, and his friends immediately began picking from his tray.

"I'm a merman, and Yugi's been kind enough to give me some tips about the human world," I explained. I was examining my food while I spoke. I picked up a large piece of food with my hands, because there were no utensils in sight. I tried to bite it, but Yugi quickly stopped me.

"You're not supposed to eat it with the paper still on," Yugi said discreetly. I chuckled, slightly embarrassed, and took off the white layer of inedible paper before trying to bite it again.

"Oh, I see it now," the female breathed. "Well, it's great that you're trying to learn more about humans. You don't see that many merpeople on land, except for those businessmen."

"Atem, let me introduce you to my friends," Yugi said. "This is Tea, Joey, and Tristan." As Yugi said their names, they waved their hands to me in turn. I waved my hand back to them, which is a common greeting among humans.

Tea intrigued me as much as I intrigued her. She was the first female human I had met personally, and I was interested to see if she would act differently than the mermaids that I was familiar with. So far, the only discrepancy I had noticed was Tea's hair. Mermaids prefer to keep their hair long; Tea's hair was cut to her shoulders, like a child. But Tea was no child—she had all of the arcs and curves of a full-grown woman.

"Did you go down ta da beach or somethin', Yug'?" Joey asked. He spoke with a strange way of moving his tongue, mutilating the English language. At first, I thought that Joey wasn't quite fluent, but it was just an accent. Some humans just speak the same language different ways. It depends on where the human was born, if I understand correctly.

Yugi laughed and rubbed his pink nose. He had something of a sunburn too, I noticed, but it wasn't nearly as bad as mine. "The beach sounds like a good idea," Tea said. "It's so hot outside…"

I was relieved to find that I wasn't the only one suffering from the heat. In the depths of the ocean, there isn't much of a change in temperature with any given day. But on the surface, there are things called seasons which have different temperatures and different amounts of light. I came to dry land in a season called summer, when it is very hot and there is a great deal of sunlight.

"Yeah, man, I can't believe you didn't invite us yesterday," Tristan said. "How could you go swimming without us?"

This reminded me of a question that I had wanted to ask for many years. I felt a little guilty inserting myself into their conversation like this, but I couldn't restrain myself. "How do humans swim?" I asked.

"Slowly," Joey answered.

"Usually we just kick our legs and use our hands to propel us forward," Tea explained. "Come on, let's go swimming!" Joey and Tristan nodded ardently.

"Okay," Yugi said. "I mean, if it's alright with you, Atem. We were supposed to be exploring the human world, and we end up going right back to the sea."

I laughed and swallowed the final bite of my food. "I've wanted to do this since I was child," I said.

"Alright, I'll see you guys in fifteen minutes," Tristan said. Yugi finished his food, and he took me back to his house while the others left for their own houses.

I was very excited. For the first time in my life, I would be able to watch humans swimming! I couldn't imagine how anything with legs could be able to move itself through water, but I knew that it was possible, somehow.

I've said that humans have different clothes for sleeping and for walking around. They also have different clothes for swimming, called a bathing suit. To this day, I cannot explain this. I can find no different between pajamas and day clothes, between a bathing suit and underwear. For that matter, I don't know why you cut chicken but eat pizza with your hands. I asked Yugi the reason once, but even he didn't know. Personally, I think that these laws were established long ago for a forgotten reason, but no one has been brave enough to make sense of things.

I had seen Yugi wearing a bathing suit when I first met him, and he was returning home so that he could change. Yugi pulled a brightly colored set of short pants out of a drawer and headed to the bathroom. "You won't need one, of course," Yugi said, "but you'll probably want to put some of this on your face and torso." He handed me a bottle with writing that I couldn't read. "It will keep your sunburn from getting worse."

I stared at the bottle with the same blank expression that I had been wearing for the past day. Yugi just shook his head and took the bottle from me. He opened the bottle up and squeezed it. A strange-smelling white substance spilled out onto his hand, and he smeared it over most of his face, neck, chest, and shoulders. He seemed frustrated when he finished. "I can never get my back," he said crossly. I took removed my damp shirt and mimicked him. The white substance, called sunscreen, made my skin feel sticky and smell unnatural. It hurt when I covered the brown, peeling skin on my shoulders. I motioned for Yugi to turn around, and then I covered his back with sunscreen for him.

"Thanks," Yugi said, and then he did the same for me.

Going swimming seemed very complicated, just like everything else in the human world. The entire ritual of putting on sunscreen was almost comical, but the pain of my burned skin reminded me that the humans had invented this for a reason.

Yugi put his shirt back on before he left, which didn't make much sense to me because he was about to take it off again anyway. But Yugi is quite modest, and exposing large amounts of skin can be considered provocative. I didn't know this at the time, but I followed Yugi's lead, like I had quickly learned to do.

We approached the seashore, and it felt very strange to see the sea backwards. I had always looked at the city from the water. This time, I was looking at the water from the city. Yugi's friends had laid out brightly colored towels on the sand to keep the sand from sticking to them too much. I remembered how unpleasant the sand had become, and I was pleased when I saw that Yugi was holding two colored towels.

Yugi's bathing suit had alerted me to the areas of the male human body that were considered inappropriate. Tea's bathing suit told me the same thing about the female body. Her hips were covered, like a man's, but she also had a strip of fabric over her breasts. This seemed strange to me, because a female's breasts are considered two of her most beautiful and feminine features.

"Hi, guys!" Tea shouted. She was lying on one of the towels with two dark spots over her eyes. The dark spots are called sunglasses. They protect the eyes from the sunlight much like sunscreen protects the skin.

Yugi laughed and ran forward. I would have run after him, but I wasn't quite sure how, and I didn't want to make too much of a fool of myself. Tea and Yugi held hands as they jumped into the water and created a giant splash. Tristan and Joey followed after them, throwing themselves into the sea with reckless abandon. I walked behind a nearby cliff so that I could change out of my clothes and transform without having to embarrass anyone.

The moment my feet touched the water, I felt an instant comfort. Dry land was so foreign and unknown, and the ocean was my home. I dove into the water and let myself transform. My legs stuck together. My bones broke and realigned themselves. Scales once again covered my body, and fins sprouted from my toes and hips. The webbing returned to my fingers, and my teeth sharpened. I was in my old form again, and I took a deep breath through my gills. I kicked my tail and shot through the water with ease.

I felt so comforted swimming through the familiar water in my familiar body that I was tempted to give up my pursuit of the strange and complex human world. But I realized how selfish this was. Now that I had gotten my answers, was I going to become content and lazy and deprive the rest of my people of the answers that I once craved for? I couldn't do such a thing, especially not after I had already come so far.

I approached the area where the others were swimming, and I watched as four pairs of legs kicked in the water. I was astounded. Back and forth, one leg after the other, kicking in the water, keeping the human's heads in the air. They swished their hands to help themselves float. I recognized Yugi's bathing suit immediately, and I slyly darted over to him. I waited to make sure that he hadn't seen me, and then I grabbed his ankle and pulled him down into the water with me.

I could tell that I had frightened Yugi quite a bit, but he smiled when he saw me. He looked at my tail for an unusually long time. I must have been the first merman he'd ever seen. But he needed to breathe, so he kicked back up to the surface.

Of course, merpeople can't speak human when in their natural form, because we have no lungs. But everyone was too busy laughing to maintain much of a conversation. Tristan and Joey tried to drown each other, and Tea held Yugi while I tickled his feet with my fins. I didn't realize that swimming was such a special thing to humans until that day. Just like humans took their world for granted, I took my world for granted as well. To humans, going to the beach is a party. To humans, touching the bottom of the ocean floor is a dream. To humans, finding a shipwreck is like finding a precious pearl inside an oyster. What we pass by every day would probably leave them speechless.

I experienced the beach in a new way that day. I saw the water, sand, and stones through human eyes. And every time I look back on that beach, all I can see is four humans and a merman, enjoying that afternoon together as if they were one of a kind.


	6. Chapter 5

After we swam, I retreated to the cliff so that I could change back into a human, and the others and I reclined on our beach towels for a moment. I looked out at the ocean. My home looked so different from up here. It seemed so bright and sparkling. For a moment, I imagined that the sun was smiling down at the sea, and the small, dark sea was so flattered that it shone with happiness.

"I'm hungry," Joey said suddenly.

"You're always hungry, Joey!" Tea chided, poking him with her elbow. "But I do wish that we had brought something to eat. Swimming makes me hungry too." I looked at the sea in front of us, packed to the brim with fish and seaweed, and thought that this was a very strange thing to say. But of course, I remembered, humans aren't able to hunt fish very well without their machines.

"I guess I should be getting home," Tristan said. "My mom told me to be home in time for dinner." As he said this, he looked at a strange bracelet on his wrist. This device is called a watch. It is a portable version of a clock. A clock is a way of determining time. We all know when the tides come in and when the tides go out. But humans are so time-oriented that they've broken the time between the tides into intervals called hours, and they've broken the hours into minutes, and they've broken the minutes into seconds. They do certain things at certain hours, and this tends to keep order in their busy lives.

Tristan's mother adhered to the hours of the clock even more strictly than most humans. Every day, she woke up at five hours and thirty minutes in the morning, which is quite early. She washed herself at six hours in the morning, made breakfast at seven hours, and so forth, each day, every day. And she expected Tristan to be home for dinner at five hours in the evening, each day, every day.

"Can I come?" Joey asked. Without even waiting for a response, he packed up his towel and dashed after Tristan.

"I need to take a shower and eat before I go to rehearsal," Tea said.

"Again?" Yugi asked. "How many times do you practice a week, Tea?"

"Every day but Sunday, and twice on Saturdays," Tea answered. She sighed as she shook the sand off her towel and folded it neatly.

Obviously, Tea had dedicated herself to some kind of discipline, but I couldn't find out which. "Practice for what?" I asked, daring to be so inquisitive.

"Well, I have normal dance classes, and then I have rehearsals for the performance," Tea answered. I gaped at her, and Tea smiled. I had seen the same smile on Yugi's face before. It was surprised, amused, and slightly disapproving. But I couldn't help myself. Humans dancing?

When mermaids dance, it is usually an intricately choreographed series of swimming maneuvers that very nearly results in collision. If you've ever seen a performance, you know that mermaids try to imitate a school of fish by swimming in perfect unison and then scattering as if they've been approached by a predator. Humans have something like this, called synchronized swimming, but I don't think that it is nearly as beautiful or as difficult.

Tea was a ballet dancer. Ballet can be exquisite when danced correctly, but it is also incredibly hard. I thought that standing on one foot was difficult, but ballerinas are forced to balance on the very tips of their toes. They can also move their bodies in extraordinary and painful ways, like lifting up one leg so that it almost touches the head. There are also innumerable other styles of human dance, but at the time, I didn't know any of this. I just sat these looking dumb, trying to imagine what kind of dance a human could do that could compare with the dance of mermaids.

"I would love to come and see you dance one day," I said, and it was completely true. Tea muttered something that was probably intended to be self-depreciating, but she looked very pleased.

Tea said goodbye to us and walked off home, and I looked out at the sea again. "Does it make you feel homesick?" Yugi asked.

"I suppose so," I answered. "You and your friends have all been very kind to me, but the sea is still my home. I didn't intend to come here permanently." Yugi looked sad when he heard this. He must have thought that I meant that I would leave him after a month or so and we would never see each other again. Actually, that _was_ what I meant at the time. But that was not what happened, not entirely.

I could not have said anything more damaging to our relationship or to this book. As soon as I said what I said, Yugi closed up like an aggravated clam. I don't think that he was intending to sabotage me or hurt me, but it's very difficult to build a friendship when you believe it will end suddenly and painfully.

Yugi was completely silent as we trekked back to his house. I began to realize I had done something wrong. And it wasn't a simple mistake, like trying to eat a hamburger with the paper on. It was a bad, complex mistake. Yugi wasn't giving me his amused smile and gently correcting me. He was avoiding me as much as he could, considering he had agreed to take care of me.

"Are you ready for dinner?" Yugi asked. He didn't look at me when he spoke. I felt a heavy pit in my stomach. I had really offended him, I knew, but how? All I had said was that I missed my home, and that was after he had asked me. I felt myself growing a little indignant. How, I asked, could he be angry at me for responding honestly to his question?

As I told you, Yugi was not angry at me. He was just shutting off and no longer contributing to the growth of our relationship. But because Yugi's personality had been so outgoing and bubbly before, standoffishness looked almost identical to anger on him.

"Yes, I would be delighted," I said, but my words were as cold as Yugi's. This was the second most dangerous sentence to our relationship and my book. In the first case, my tone had been kind but my words had been harmful. In the second case, my words had been kind but my tone had been harmful. We had turned into an arguing couple that doesn't speak for days. Yugi didn't want to build a relationship that was doomed to fail. I was angry at Yugi because I thought he was angry at me for no good reason.

Yugi walked into the kitchen, put some water onto the hot piece of metal so that it would boil, and then headed off to change his clothes once more. I sat down and tapped my fingers against the kitchen table. I had already learned a great deal, but I was hungry for more information. I had a billion questions, and I should have asked Yugi all of them, but I was being stubborn and foolish. When Yugi returned and started to prepare dinner, I remained silent.

Here is an example of another way that humans prepare their food. Instead of holding the food directly over the fire, sometimes humans heat up water and then submerge their food in this hot liquid. Heat plays a very important role in human cooking.

Yugi finished cooking a while later, and we ate. Although we were in the same room, I felt as though I was eating alone. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable and impatient, so I ate my hot plate of sticky cheese and noodles far too quickly and hurt my tongue.

"Um, it's too late to go out again," Yugi said. "Let's just stay inside and watch TV until tomorrow."

We entered Yugi's living room. I was very curious about what a "TV" was, although I almost regretted the fact that Yugi was showing it to me. There was a large, black box in the corner. Yugi touched one of the little buttons, and suddenly a picture came up. I thought that this TV was like the machines at the arcade, but it was very different. The TV showed humans beings, not monsters and little yellow circles. And there was no joystick in sight. The TV is a way of watching a play over again, but the actors don't need to be present.

As I discovered what the TV did, I felt a wave of relief and joy. This TV could be a very easy way of finding out about the human world. I could see things through this magic box that I could never hope to see just wandering the street. I sat, enraptured, until the sun went down. Yugi checked his watch, discovered that it was bedtime, and he and I started to get ready to go to sleep.

I was very lucky to be saved from my stupidity quickly. As I lay on top of Yugi's covers, a little voice in my head seemed to tell me, "What on earth are you doing? Don't you realize that you've offended Yugi? Go apologize; don't snub him."

I don't know exactly who this little voice was. My conscience, perhaps. But it couldn't have been my conscious brain, because I really didn't know what I was supposed to be apologizing for. I backtracked to the very moment that Yugi had started acting coldly to me. It was right before we left the beach. What had I said?

And then I realized the truth. I nearly banged my head against the wall, I was so frustrated with myself. I didn't know if Yugi had gone to sleep or not, but I needed to follow my conscience's advice and apologize for what I had so foolishly said.

I walked over to the living room door. My feet were making the same soft thumping noises that Yugi's feet had made this morning. I rapped gently on his door. "Come in," Yugi said. His voice sounded a little tired, but he had answered too quickly for him to have already been sleeping.

I opened up the door. Yugi was sitting up on the couch, staring inquisitively up at me. I walked over to him and sat down by his feet. "Yugi, I believe that we've had a bit of a misunderstanding," I said. "When I said that I wasn't planning to live on the surface for the rest of my life, that didn't mean that we couldn't be friends."

Yugi laughed softly. "Tea told me that long-distance relationships never work out anyway," he said. "Besides, it's not as if I want to be best friends with everyone I meet." Soon after he said this, he rubbed the back of his head and grinned sheepishly. He knew that this was a lie. "I guess that I'm the one that should apologize."

"How about we both forgive each other and start from the beginning?" I proposed. Yugi nodded and extended his hand.

"Hi. I'm Yugi. It's nice to meet you," he said. The gesture with his hand wasn't a high-five because his palm wasn't facing me. Yugi flashed that old, amused smile and grabbed my right hand with his. He moved our hands up and down a few times.

"Hello, Yugi," I replied cheerfully. "I'm Atem."

Yugi leaned against the back of the couch beside me. "Most humans usually greet each other with a handshake," Yugi explained. "How do merpeople do it?"

"We press our hands together and cross our tails," I said. "It has a name, but it is very difficult to pronounce in this form."

Yugi looked at me. "How did you manage to learn English?" he asked.

"I listened," I said. "I used to go to the docks and listen to the humans speak to each other while they worked. I picked up the language after a few years."

"Wow," Yugi breathed. "You must be pretty smart." I didn't know what to make of this comment. I had never considered myself more intelligent than anyone else, whether I spoke English or not. I had just dedicated myself to coming to the surface, and thus I had neglected many of my other responsibilities. "Do they have schools down there?"

"Schools? Of course they have schools," I said.

"What sort of classes do they teach?" Yugi asked. I peered at him, utterly confused.

"What sort of classes do the schools teach?" I repeated. Yugi nodded. "Well, I suppose that different schools teach different things…"

"How many hours do you have to go?" At this, I was stumped. I stared at Yugi blankly, trying to understand what he meant.

"I don't quite know what you're asking," I said. Yugi seemed as stumped as I was. Apparently, his question had been perfectly plain. To another human, it would have been. I think that Yugi remembered that he wasn't speaking to one of his normal friends, and he started to laugh.

"Okay, when I say school, I don't mean a school of fish," he said. "I mean a place that you go with other kids to learn things."

"Oh," I said, chuckling. "Well, that makes a great deal more sense. I don't think that we have schools like those in the Underwater City. If someone needs to learn something, they can usually get it from a book or a master of a certain art."

"I guess that I have as many questions about your world as you have about mine," Yugi said. "Maybe when you're finished with your book about humans, you can write one about merpeople."

To humans, we merpeople are just a creature in the sea. They know we exist, they've even see us occasionally, but we're out of their way, so they don't care about us very much. If I was going to write such a book, it would have been for Yugi exclusively. And I did write it a few years later, as Yugi's birthday present.


	7. Chapter 6

The next morning, Yugi and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. "So, Atem," Yugi began. He sounded hesitant, as if he really didn't want to talk about whatever he was going to talk about.

"What is it, Yugi?" I asked.

Yugi's eyes flicked guiltily around the room. "It's just… I told my grandpa that you would help him around the shop, and… Well, he's been talking about asking you to leave soon…"

Grandpa was not an unkind person. He was not even miserly. But like any other man, he only had a certain amount of money to work with. My staying at his home only gave him another mouth to feed, and I weighed heavily on his tight budget. I would have been ready and willing to help Grandpa with his shop under normal circumstances, but because I was so inexperienced with the human world, I was worried that I might do more harm than help.

"I will do my best, Yugi," I said. "But I've never worked in a shop before, especially one like your grandfather's."

"Oh, it will be fine," Yugi replied. He looked a little relieved. I suppose that he expected me to be offended. "I should actually work today too, so we'll be together. I'll show you how to use the cash register and where everything is in storage. And… I'll handle customer service."

We finished our meal, and Yugi once again fished out a set of clothing for me to wear. I felt a little bad as Yugi went around making our beds and cleaning up the bedroom. I felt that he was going through a lot of trouble for me, and at no benefit to himself. I wished that there was something, anything, that I could do for him. I would work every day at Grandpa's shop. I would learn how to make my bed and fix my own food and clean my own dishes. I promised myself that I would not ruin this because I was useless.

"Before you go to work in the shop," Yugi said to me, "maybe you should take a shower and wash your hair and brush your teeth." Although I hadn't noticed a thing, Yugi's neighbors could probably have smelled me. My breath reeked of dead fish and cereal, and my skin stank like ocean.

"I don't quite know what you mean by… wash my hair," I said slowly. "Am I supposed to scrub it with soap like I do with my skin?"

"Well… sort of," Yugi answered. "But there's a different kind of soap for your hair, like there's a different kind of soap for your teeth." This is another example of how complicated everything in the human world has become. I've learned that some human women even use another kind of soap to wash their faces.

I followed his advice and washed my hair in the shower with a thick liquid called shampoo. When I emerged from the steamy bathroom, Yugi immediately handed me a hairbrush and a toothbrush. "These can be yours," Yugi said. "Humans don't usually share these things."

I walked straight back into the bathroom and looked at the mirror. But I couldn't see myself today. I wondered why the magical reflection wasn't working until a drop of water trickled down the mirror's surface. I realized that the water must be causing the mirror to malfunction, so I grabbed a towel and dried the mirror off. The picture wasn't very clear after I did this, but I could see myself.

I found Yugi's toothpaste and put a very large amount on the bristles of the toothbrush. I ran it under the water that came out of the sink, like I had seen Yugi do, and I placed the toothbrush in my mouth. I began to rub the bristles against my teeth, but the toothpaste seemed to grow and swell. Suddenly foam began to spill from between my lips.

I knew that this wasn't supposed to happen, so I spat the toothpaste out and wiped off my chin with the back of my hand. I put the toothbrush back into my mouth and tried brushing again. There was much less foam this time. About three days later, I realized that I was putting much too much toothpaste onto my toothbrush, and that was causing the overflow of foam.

When I was finished, I rinsed the foam and saliva off the toothbrush and set it down. Then I took out the hairbrush and began running it through my hair, just as I had seen Yugi do. As soon as I tried, I felt immediate resistance. It was as if the brush was trying to pull my hair right out of my head, and I don't need to tell you that it hurt.

When Yugi was brushing his hair, he had no expression of pain on his face. I assumed correctly that my objective was to get the brush to go through my hair smoothly. I started at the end of my spiky hair and worked my way up to my scalp. I ripped out knots of hair as I brushed, and I wondered if this would leave me bald. But it turned out that I had many hairs to spare, and I finally managed to get the brush to go through my hair without encountering any knots.

I met Yugi in the living room, feeling as though I had accomplished something momentous. As I look back, I realize how silly it was that I was so pleased with just making myself presentable. But Yugi didn't think it was silly. He looked at me with pride in his eyes as he saw my untangled hair and my clean teeth.

"Are you ready to go?" Yugi asked. I nodded, and we walked downstairs to the Turtle Game Shop.

The Game Shop was, naturally, a place where games were sold. But human games are far more varied than our simple games. They have normal things like card games and puzzles, but they also have very complicated games, things far more complicated than Pacman at the arcade. There are games that look so real you could be confused about what's in the world and what's in the machine. There are games that take wit and quick-thinking. All of these kinds of games were on display in Grandpa's store.

"All right, now someone's going to come in through the door," Yugi began. "They're going to be looking for something to buy." I felt a little perturbed that Yugi was speaking to me so childishly, but I came to understand that Yugi didn't really know what I knew. "I'll help them find what they're looking for. Then they'll come to you. You'll check the price tag and then enter it onto the cash register."

"Wait," I said immediately. "What do you mean by price tag?"

"It's just a little sticker where the cost of the item is written," Yugi replied.

"Yugi," I said softly, "I can't read your language."

"Oh," Yugi said. "Oh. Well, let me show you what the numbers and signs mean." Yugi pulled me over to the cash register and held his hands out. One hand was closed; the other hand had one finger up. "Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?" Yugi asked.

"One," I replied. Yugi pulled out a paper and pencil, which serves a purpose identical to a tablet and a mallet-and-chisel, and drew a single vertical line.

"This is the symbol for one," Yugi said. He drew ten more shapes on the paper and explained that they stood for two, three, four, and so on. "Now," he continued, "when I write these two numbers together, they stand for a different number." He wrote a two and a one very close to each other, and then he showed it to me. "Can you guess what number this stands for?"

I calculated quickly. It couldn't have been three—there was already a symbol for three. It couldn't have been two either, for the same reason. I guessed that it was a large number that hadn't been covered by the basic symbols, so I said the first logical thing that came to mind. "Twenty-one?"

Yugi looked ecstatic. "That's right!" he said happily. Then he bent down and drew a zero next to the one. "And this one?"

I began to understand this system. There were zero ones, one ten, and two hundreds. "Two hundred and ten," I answered. Yugi nodded.

"Okay, now things get a little harder," Yugi said. He placed a small dot next to the zero and he added an eight. "Every number after the dot is a part of one whole number," he explained. "So this would be two hundred and ten-point-eight. That means that there's two hundred and ten, but there's also eighty percent of one."

This was a little over my head at first, and I'm sure that it's the same for you. Merpeople only work with whole numbers—one, two, three, etc. Humans, the overly complicated race that they are, have broken the number one into a literally innumerable number of parts. But I soon learned that every number to the left of the dot increased in value as it grew farther from the dot, and every number to the right of the dot decreased in value as it grew father from the dot. Don't try to understand this—it is incredibly complicated in the beginning.

Then Yugi showed me an example of human paper money. "When someone gives you cash, you just look at the corner to see how much it's worth. Then you subtract the worth of the item from the worth of the money, and you give them the difference." Yugi showed me the monetary values of different human coins, but he was beginning to hurry. As I look back, I can see why. He was already late in opening up the shop, and humans are very time-conscious, as I've said. Then Yugi showed me how to deal with credit cards and debit cards, which exchange money that exists only in theory.

"Okay, you just manage the register," Yugi said. "I'll restock and help the customers." Again, I felt sorry for imposing so heavily on Yugi. I was eating his food. I was wasting his money. I was taking up all of his time and energy. I was really considering leaving Yugi's home at that moment. This was my book, but Yugi was paying the price.

Yugi finally opened up the shop. But it was too early in the morning to have much business in a game shop in the middle of summer, when all children are free to roam the streets and do as they please. Yugi sat down on a little stool behind the counter and looked through a small book called a magazine.

Books are far more common on the surface than they are in the Underwater City. To write underwater, one has to go through the enormous trouble of finding a large stone, transporting it to the Hall of Tomes, and then carefully carving whatever the book may say onto the monolith. Then that book, as you know, is only available in that one copy and may only be read in the Hall of Tomes.

But on the surface, books are not nearly as heavy or as rare. Tiny characters can be written onto paper with a pencil almost as quickly as one can speak. A great number of copies of books can be made, more than millions, and the books can be carried around and read easily because paper is so light and thin.

"Will you teach me how to read one day?" I asked. "I would be fascinated to read all of your human books." Yugi chuckled when I said this. My first instinct was to think that Yugi considered me too unintelligent to learn how to read English, but I knew better than that.

"Well, I don't think that you could read _all_ of them," Yugi said. I cocked my head at him questioningly.

"I've read all of the books in the Hall of Tomes," I replied. I had also read a few of the more interesting books twice over. But I was under the impression that the human world had as few books as our world does. I was horribly mistaken.

"How about I take you to the library after our shift is over?" Yugi said. "We'll pick up a book that you want to read, and I'll start to teach you our letters."

There was a tinkling sound. The bell above the Game Shop door had rung, and a customer had just walked in. Yugi put his magazine down and walked over to the young human. "Hello," he said kindly. "Is there anything that I can help you with?"

"Yes, I'm looking for a puzzle for my son," the woman replied.

"How old is he?" Yugi asked.

"The puzzle is for his eleventh birthday," the woman answered.

Yugi ducked around a stand and pulled a colorful box off a shelf. "Maybe this one," he said. "I was obsessed with puzzles when I was his age, and I loved this one."

I felt a combination of nervousness and excitement as the woman brought the puzzle over to me. "Hello," I said. "How are you today?" The woman smiled, but she didn't say a word in reply. I scanned the box for this mysterious white sticker, and it seemed like a very long time before I finally found it. "Seventeen twenty-seven," I said, reading the numbers as Yugi had taught me. The woman wordlessly handed me a piece of money with a twenty written on the top, and I used the register to find out how much money I should give her in return. I was unable to do it mentally—I've never been particularly good with numbers.

I stared at the coins and the paper money trapped inside the register, trying to remember their values. I needed two dollars and seventy-three cents (a cent is one-hundredth of a dollar). The dollars were easiest. All I needed was two ones. The coins were more difficult. There were a dozen different combinations of coins to pick from, but which was best? I picked the fewest coins that I could and handed the change and the receipt to the woman quickly. "Have a nice day," I managed. Yugi and I watched the woman closely as she strode out of the shop with the puzzle under her arm.

"Hey, great job!" Yugi said. I sighed, and I could feel my tense muscles relaxing. What had I been so worried about? "I remember the first time I worked in the Game Shop," Yugi mused. "It was last year. I was restocking, and I knocked over a stand. That knocked over another stand and another stand, like dominoes, until one of the stands landed on a little kid looking at Duel Monsters cards. He broke his leg, and the kid's parents sued us. Grandpa had to go to court."

I laughed. Although my first day at work had only just begun, it sounded like I was having enormously better luck than Yugi had had. I felt proud of my small accomplishment, and the next few quarter-tides only added to my self-satisfaction.

Grandpa came strolling down the stairs when the sun was highest in the sky. I had just gotten finished ringing up a customer's order, and I was feeling much more comfortable with the cash register and with human currency than I had felt at the beginning of the day. But my confidence seemed to evaporate as Grandpa stared at me, evaluating me. What faults did he see? What things had I done wrong?

"I see that you've been helping around the shop. Thank you," Grandpa said. And that was all. I glowed with pleasure. Yugi and Grandpa were both pleased with my performance. I had managed to cross another hurdle of this unfamiliar life, and it was getting less unfamiliar every day.


	8. Chapter 7

Well, this is it. The final chapter. I hope that you all enjoyed reading it. I have a few thanks to give out:

Thanks to **dragonlady222, Deviousdragon, Yizuki, **and **YamisChibi **for reviewing.

Thanks to **InkedButterfly, YamisChibi, **and **Yizuki** for favoriting.

Thanks to** Panguins-in-American-Oh-my, YamisChibi, Yizuki, **and **lucidscreamer** for alerting.

And thanks to everybody who read. You guys make me feel so special!

* * *

Yugi and I navigated our way through the maze of sidewalks and intersections. Some of the streets were becoming familiar to me, but I wouldn't have been able to find my way back to the mall or arcade if my life depended on it.

We walked through the glass doors of a large building, and my breath was immediately stolen away from me. The building was about the size of the Hall of Tomes, but there were infinitely more books here. In the place of the monoliths, shelves stood, and each shelf held maybe seventy books.

And all of these books weren't just copies. These were all individual works by individual people. The Hall of Tomes only has a few dozen books; this one library had tens of thousands.

"So where do you want to start?" Yugi asked. "There are all sorts of books here—kids' books, fantasy, romance novels… Oh! There're also some educational books, if you don't want to read fiction."

Where did I want to start? I had no idea. "Why don't you pick something that you like, Yugi?" I proposed. Yugi grabbed my hand and led me over to the fantasy fiction section. I came to learn that this is Yugi's favorite section. He's not as avid a reader as I, but when he does read he prefers to read stories about gallant heroes, fierce villains, and make-believe creatures. In fact, one of Yugi's favorite books is an old novel that centers around merpeople. It was written before the humans discovered our kind, when they considered us to be nothing more than mythological. Many of the details are wrong, of course.

Yugi sorted through the books on a certain shelf and cheered as he found the one he wanted. "Come on, let's check this out," Yugi said. Yugi didn't mean that we were going to examine the book, although we were, in a way. He meant that we were going to let the library know that we were borrowing the book and we would return it shortly.

We headed home. When we got to Yugi's bedroom, Yugi took out another paper and pencil and sat on the floor with his legs twisted. At first I though that Yugi's sitting position would be painful, but he didn't show any signs of discomfort. So I mimicked him, crossing my legs this way and that as I sat, and I peered down at the book on the ground.

"All right," Yugi said. "This book is called _The Fellowship of the Ring_. It's one of my favorites." I tried to translate the words Yugi had spoken to the characters on the cover of the book, but I couldn't see the correlation. "Let's start with the first word."

Now, the written English language is far too intricate for me to relate here. But humans have managed to make something complicated again. Instead of having a reasonable alphabet like ours, where each character stands for a simple syllable, English has broken the syllables into letters, which have different combinations and different pronunciations, and everything becomes very difficult. By the time we were going to eat lunch, I had learned how to decipher the first two words, "The" and "Fellowship". I didn't feel like we I had made much progress—we hadn't even opened the book yet—but Yugi assured me that I had learned much more than he had expected.

"How long did it take you to learn how to read?" I asked.

Yugi shrugged. "A few years, I think. I don't really remember it. I was just a little kid when I learned." Great, I thought. I wasn't planning on staying on the surface for so long. I would have to learn in months what took human children years.

But still, learning how to read and write in English would make composing my book much easier. It would take much less time to write on paper, and I would be able to organize my thoughts in written format instead of working in my head only. If I devoted myself to learning how to read and write English, I thought, it would be a valuable way of spending my time.

Yugi put his book on his desk and sat down sighing in his chair. "I don't even know what I should show you," he said. "You've learned a lot since you came here… but it is enough to write a book about?"

"You don't need to put so much pressure on yourself. You've already helped me more than I could ever ask," I said reassuringly. Yugi smiled and blushed slightly. "I will focus on learning written English. I'm sure that I'll learn plenty of other things along the way."

I admit that I didn't know where to turn either. Humans have invented a number of new customs and contraptions, but really, their lives are no different then ours. They get up in the morning, kiss the ones they love, eat, work, play, and go to sleep again, just like we do. And I knew that I really wanted the moral of my book to be just that—in our hearts and in our lives, humans and merpeople are just the same.

But if that was true, then I didn't really need to learn much more, did I? All I needed to do was stay long enough to learn how to read and create my first draft. After that, I could return to my home. I had all the information I needed, as far as I was aware. I determined to leave the surface soon, but I didn't say anything to Yugi. I had learned my lesson from last time.

Over the next few weeks, little changed. Yugi and I got up in the morning, got cleaned and dressed, and ate breakfast. Then we studied a little English out of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ or we helped Grandpa in the shop, and we watched TV or visited Yugi's friends in the afternoon.

Yugi and I grew very close. I learned that his parents had died together when their car and another car collided on the street. Yugi had been sent to live with his grandfather as an orphan, and Grandpa had taught him everything about owning a store and about playing games. As far as Yugi has told me (which isn't much—he's very modest), he's some sort of international celebrity because he's the greatest Duel Monsters player in the world.

The days began to grow a little cooler, and the trees turned the color of sunset. We were passing from summer to fall, a time of year when the days are shorter and colder and darker. I could feel that, like summer, my time here was ending. I had learned all that Yugi could teach me about how to read and write, and I had started to compose my first few chapters. Yugi was getting ready to go back to school, where he would spend most of the day without me.

It is always a sad thing to part with someone you care about, even if you know that you'll be able to see them again whenever you please. And I knew that it would be very sad to say goodbye to Yugi and his friends. But I couldn't linger here forever as a nuisance when my task had been completed. I had to tell myself this many nights, because I couldn't seem to will myself to make the break.

One day, at the last possible moment, I was joining my human companions on an excursion in back-to-school shopping. Back-to-school shopping includes picking up new clothes and new writing things and such. Tea had picked up bags of clothing, while Yugi had devoted his funds to office supplies. Joey and Tristan seemed to be saving up all their money for our trip to the food court.

We all ordered our food and sat down at a too-small table to eat. I knew that I needed to tell them then, when they were all together and happy and ready for the new season to start. "Everyone," I said. They all looked up at me. I didn't usually start conversations, so this was unusual. "I have something that I must say."

It was foolish, but I felt that I was severing a tie that could never be repaired. If I returned to my home, would we all grow apart? Would they still invite me to the arcade or ask me to join them on the beach? Would they even remember my name?

"Well, go ahead and say it, man," Tristan chided. I had been silent in my contemplation for quite a long time.

"I…" I didn't want to say it. But really, would my relationship with the gang have improved if I stayed? My purpose here had ended. If I remained here, I would just become an annoyance, leeching from Grandpa and Yugi, interfering with the others and their friendship. They would come to resent me, or worse, hate me. I didn't want to say it, but I needed to. "I need to go back to my true home."

The smiles that had shone so brightly at me turned into dark frowns. Yugi leaned back in his seat and turned his face to his food, but I could still see tears in his eyes. "How… how soon?" Tea asked.

"Tonight." I could hardly believe that the word had come out of my face. I hadn't left myself with much time.

"I guess that ya need ta get back, seein' ya finished ya research an' all," Joey said. He didn't look happy, exactly, but he didn't seem as sad as the others. I think that, for some reason, he could understand what I was going through a little more easily than Yugi, Tristan, or Tea could. "It ain't gonna be easy, sayin' goodbye ta ya, but we were gonna have ta do it eventually."

I watched Yugi as he nodded sadly. He seemed much more depressed than the rest of them, which was understandable. I had lived with Yugi for over a month. When I left, I would be leaving a hole in his home and in his life, a hole he hadn't experienced since he lost his parents. I felt sorry for causing him such pain.

"We'll see you again sometime, won't we?" Tea asked. "You… you might need to do some more research for your book, maybe… or you could come back just to hang out?"

"Of course. I'd love to come see you again," I said sincerely. "This isn't goodbye forever. I'm just going to live at home again. I'll be able to visit whenever I'm available."

"Then… let's make your last day living on the surface the best day yet!" Yugi proposed. I saw him swallow his sorrow and put on a smile for me.

"That sounds like a good idea," I replied softly. We finished our food and then we visited all of the best spots in town. We visited the arcade first, and I set a new high score on the old decrepit Pacman machine. Then we visited the movie theater, where we were able to watch a special form of television. I saw Yugi play Duel Monsters for the very first time, and he defeated Joey mercilessly. But by the time all this was finished, the sun was setting, and it was getting late.

We all drifted down to the beach with expressions of sad dreaminess on our faces. I never forgot that day. We had certainly made it the best day yet, the best day of my entire life. And as we walked down the street, I realized that I had never felt as close to anyone as I did to these four humans.

I crouched down on the sand. "When I first came here," I said, "I knew nothing about this place. I felt excited and afraid, until I met you." I was speaking to everyone, but the words were meant for Yugi especially. I stood and faced them. "I'd like to thank you all for helping me so much. I just hope that I'll be able to repay you one day."

"Just mention us in your book, okay?" Tea said. I remembered Yugi's words from a few weeks ago, and I was grateful that they were all so selflessly generous.

"I… I guess it's time for you to go," Yugi said. His voice was barely more than a whisper. He was on the verge of crying, I could tell, although he was hiding it bravely. "Well, goodbye."

Tea turned away to brush her eyes and hide her tears. Joey and Tristan just nodded. "Goodbye," I replied quietly. I gave them one last fleeting smile, and I turned and walked behind the crag of rock to take off my clothes.

Returning to my home was almost as strange as leaving it. I had been away from the Underwater City for four weeks. I swam back into my home and found that my furniture had been tossed about by the tides and the currents. I visited my friends and found that a great deal had happened when I was absent. I knew that I would get used to this life quickly, but on that first evening my scales seemed almost more foreign as my skin.

I devoted my time to setting up my monolith in the Hall of Tomes and writing my book, but every Saturday I put my legs back on and went to visit my friends on the surface. They were very surprised to see me again so soon, and I believe that they assumed I would be gone longer. They thought that my life in the sea was as busy as my life on dry land—needless to say, they were very wrong.

I've seen the seasons change as time has gone by. I've seen the land covered in snow, a special form of ice. I've seen the days cold and gray. I've see fall and winter and spring and summer, and I've seen my friends grow up. I've seen Yugi grow tall and self-confident. I've seen Tea dance beautifully with hundreds of eyes watching her. I've seen Joey excel in school with Yugi's diligent tutoring, and I've seen Tristan develop a strong romantic relationship with Joey's sister.

Sometimes I think about when I was young and curious, when I thought that visiting the human world was just a dream, when I thought that humans were as different from us as jellyfish. And then I think about how much I've changed since those early days. I've learned that we are all the same, and I hope that you have too.


End file.
